© 2011 bridget batch
© 2011 bridget batch
Occupying Wall Street...
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
I was bullied as a kid... (too)
Wow, I am really impressed.
I have been paying minor amounts of attention to the anti-bullying initiatives floating around the internet (or press about the ones being installed in schools). But although I haven't completely repressed the bullying I suffered through (now, did I commit some? That's suppressed...), I haven't thought to personally engage with this as an adult.
The It Gets Better Project, begun by Dan Savage and his partner Terry, is a great start in bringing attention to this enormous problem, and hopefully helping people. Obviously I support it, but I cannot completely identify personally because I am heterosexual (I still feel pain on behalf of friends of mine though, but that could be a days-long rant...).
My own personal experience was painful enough to be extremely influential in the development of myself. Although the excruciating generalities of the memories of two particular points in my life - 5th Grade and 7th Grade - are clearly delineated in my brain, the specifics of those periods seemed to have been flushed down some sort of pain drain. So, I don't think about these experiences much. But then, I read this story on Salon, in which writer Steve Almond actually publishes an interview with his 8th Grade tormentor.
I am touched by the compassion and Almond's ability to actually place the transactions of junior high school "kids will be kids" bs into the context of real people's lives. The actions of every single force in our lives affect how things will be, and it is easy to forget that. Life is intricate, but the harder we work to unravel the complexities, the more deeply rewarding it is. It's so easy to simply write off people as "bullies" and "assholes." But what about envisioning a world in which that can be prevented, in which people no longer become (or pass through phases) in which they are such things.
We can continue to punish the perpetrators, but isn't it time to figure out how to prevent the crime from the beginning?
I think it's terrifying to envision a peaceful, harmonious world. It's frightening to even try to make a more peaceful, harmonious "self." I don't mean this sarcastically, I think this is a real thing for people, for our culture. What would we talk about? What kind of media would actually sell if people weren't scared to death all the time? If people didn't stress-eat bad foods and gain weight, they wouldn't buy weight loss products. If people were happy with themselves, they wouldn't need to buy as much cosmetics, plastic surgery, clothing, strippers, whatever... When there's a threat, you want information. Our major media keeps us in thrall to a constant low-level sense of fight or flight. Sure, it's important to know about the world, but I notice that I get less and less from consuming the news. Half of what goes on in the world doesn't get covered in the mainstream media anyway.
If the media and advertising industries cannot sell by tweaking our fear instincts, then wouldn't our entire economy collapse? Wouldn't that be even more painful?
The Hippies talked about a dawning of a new consciousness. It may be easy to ridicule the New Age Movement, but a shift in consciousness is such an enormous change that it's pretty much unimaginable. There is much to malign in corporations but they are made up of individual humans, and most of those humans, at least on a personal level think they want a better world. They don't want to cause "real" pain in whatever way they want to define it. But I don't think the powerful interests of the Western world actually can envision any way to act than how they do. Living in the harmony envisioned by the television-less residents of the state of Bhutan doesn't make any sense to most of us.
It's that vision, and it will be radical, that we need to develop.
But one step towards that is examining and investigating the elements of our culture that allow and even encourage bullying, which Salon.com is starting to do.
I have been paying minor amounts of attention to the anti-bullying initiatives floating around the internet (or press about the ones being installed in schools). But although I haven't completely repressed the bullying I suffered through (now, did I commit some? That's suppressed...), I haven't thought to personally engage with this as an adult.
The It Gets Better Project, begun by Dan Savage and his partner Terry, is a great start in bringing attention to this enormous problem, and hopefully helping people. Obviously I support it, but I cannot completely identify personally because I am heterosexual (I still feel pain on behalf of friends of mine though, but that could be a days-long rant...).
My own personal experience was painful enough to be extremely influential in the development of myself. Although the excruciating generalities of the memories of two particular points in my life - 5th Grade and 7th Grade - are clearly delineated in my brain, the specifics of those periods seemed to have been flushed down some sort of pain drain. So, I don't think about these experiences much. But then, I read this story on Salon, in which writer Steve Almond actually publishes an interview with his 8th Grade tormentor.
I am touched by the compassion and Almond's ability to actually place the transactions of junior high school "kids will be kids" bs into the context of real people's lives. The actions of every single force in our lives affect how things will be, and it is easy to forget that. Life is intricate, but the harder we work to unravel the complexities, the more deeply rewarding it is. It's so easy to simply write off people as "bullies" and "assholes." But what about envisioning a world in which that can be prevented, in which people no longer become (or pass through phases) in which they are such things.
We can continue to punish the perpetrators, but isn't it time to figure out how to prevent the crime from the beginning?
I think it's terrifying to envision a peaceful, harmonious world. It's frightening to even try to make a more peaceful, harmonious "self." I don't mean this sarcastically, I think this is a real thing for people, for our culture. What would we talk about? What kind of media would actually sell if people weren't scared to death all the time? If people didn't stress-eat bad foods and gain weight, they wouldn't buy weight loss products. If people were happy with themselves, they wouldn't need to buy as much cosmetics, plastic surgery, clothing, strippers, whatever... When there's a threat, you want information. Our major media keeps us in thrall to a constant low-level sense of fight or flight. Sure, it's important to know about the world, but I notice that I get less and less from consuming the news. Half of what goes on in the world doesn't get covered in the mainstream media anyway.
If the media and advertising industries cannot sell by tweaking our fear instincts, then wouldn't our entire economy collapse? Wouldn't that be even more painful?
The Hippies talked about a dawning of a new consciousness. It may be easy to ridicule the New Age Movement, but a shift in consciousness is such an enormous change that it's pretty much unimaginable. There is much to malign in corporations but they are made up of individual humans, and most of those humans, at least on a personal level think they want a better world. They don't want to cause "real" pain in whatever way they want to define it. But I don't think the powerful interests of the Western world actually can envision any way to act than how they do. Living in the harmony envisioned by the television-less residents of the state of Bhutan doesn't make any sense to most of us.
It's that vision, and it will be radical, that we need to develop.
But one step towards that is examining and investigating the elements of our culture that allow and even encourage bullying, which Salon.com is starting to do.
Friday, August 26, 2011
REMOTE NATION - public art installation by Kevin Cooley
The High Line Park may be one of the best public spaces ever constructed. The park is almost perfect, completely satisfying our urges to trespass without harm, to take respite in greenery, bask in the serenity of an oasis while being only steps away from any kind of urban pleasure. Looking out from the park the gluttonous eye is filled with the Manhattan cityscape, made that much more appreciable via the slight elevation. And, now, to add to the visual feast, is Kevin Cooley's Remote Nation.
This is a major public art installation by Kevin. He has installed it previously but not on this scale. This time around, he was specifically inspired by the location on the High Line. Remote Nation consists of a building overflowing with analog televisions, all broadcasting what Cooley's father is viewing on television in Colorado. Mr. Cooley watches a lot of tv, apparently he always has. Now, passerby on the High Line in New York City can almost watch with him.
I'm biased, but Remote Nation is truly lovely. The blue-tinged light emanating from the building's huge windows glow and flicker, . The public art piece is subtle, and inspires a sense of awe, similar to that of viewing the northern lights. Cooley has created an electromagnetic field silent, and sublime. Looking from the outside in, the viewer becomes voyeur, witness to this evidence of human presence dancing in collective solitude. Passerby pause, pondering the meaning, wondering if they really are seeing everyone in a large condo building watching the exact same thing.
It is no secret that screens entrance us. They transmit communal virtual experiences and cultures that can connect us across global distance, and while simultaneously alienating two individuals who are sitting right next to each other, sucked into an LCD haze.
Check out Remote Nation, on the High Line at West 23rd St - West 25th St until Sept 24, or at its website: remotenation.tv
© 2011 Kevin Cooley
This is a major public art installation by Kevin. He has installed it previously but not on this scale. This time around, he was specifically inspired by the location on the High Line. Remote Nation consists of a building overflowing with analog televisions, all broadcasting what Cooley's father is viewing on television in Colorado. Mr. Cooley watches a lot of tv, apparently he always has. Now, passerby on the High Line in New York City can almost watch with him.
I'm biased, but Remote Nation is truly lovely. The blue-tinged light emanating from the building's huge windows glow and flicker, . The public art piece is subtle, and inspires a sense of awe, similar to that of viewing the northern lights. Cooley has created an electromagnetic field silent, and sublime. Looking from the outside in, the viewer becomes voyeur, witness to this evidence of human presence dancing in collective solitude. Passerby pause, pondering the meaning, wondering if they really are seeing everyone in a large condo building watching the exact same thing.
It is no secret that screens entrance us. They transmit communal virtual experiences and cultures that can connect us across global distance, and while simultaneously alienating two individuals who are sitting right next to each other, sucked into an LCD haze.
Check out Remote Nation, on the High Line at West 23rd St - West 25th St until Sept 24, or at its website: remotenation.tv
© 2011 Kevin Cooley
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
The Interstice Statement
Crafting an artist's statement is often more arduous than making the photograph. I can't think of an artist I know who has not complained about the difficulty of writing about their own work and these are all intelligent people.
I do enjoy reading a good artist's statement. It's great to learn what someone's work is and why they make it. However, I first decided to pursue visual arts seriously when I was 14 and swooned upon a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. I pretend I am more sophisticated now, but the rush, the energy, the excitement of the Monet's, the O'Keefes, the thousand years of art history and whatever else was on display at the time (I do wish I recalled all of it), thrilled me. I felt closer to a feeling of transcendence or divine than I ever had in the church in which I was raised. In fact, I had been a fairly devout child but connecting through artistic vision was far more powerful.
And during this visit, I read not a single statement or anything else about the work. I felt its power and influence merely from taking it in.
Why do I make the photographs in the project Interstice, and my video projects - which are certainly related?
The transience of the world, of this life. It's all gone in an instant.
So, where do you go?
First, you must define "you." People apparently have innate personalities resonant from birth. Babies make that clear. And then we spend our entire lives building that which is our "self." A huge industry capitalizes on this every day. No one has answered the question - does the self have a color?
We probably only bother because even though reality may be a questionable condition (see contemporary philosophy), mortality is experienced by all of us as an irrefutable fact. Without the deep-rooted certainty of an implicit timeline, desperately feared, what would we accomplish? Can personality be considered an accomplishment? It is one of those things that actually matters when you're lying in that hospital bed. Thanks for the deadline, God.
As we mill around on the surface of the earth, the very specifics of relationship, tasks of daily life, family or no family, career demands, these very tangible details often dominate our thoughts. I curse the intense penetration of the mundane, the fact that this morning I had to spend a half an hour moving things we had stored in the basement because the building's sewer pump broke (and can you imagine if i were responsible for taking care of THAT detail). We scramble constantly to avert disasters, manage debacles, or just cope with unexpected nuisances like parking fines (two hours the other day getting an inspection because we forgot it had expired, maybe we should live in Minnesota where that would have been impossible during the state shutdown), and condominium catastrophes. Our minds get stuck focusing on the petty.
However, a true disaster - war, 9/11, car accidents, an event (you know, death) or truly committing to a spiritual quest often precipitate so-called "life changes." The soul becomes awake.
We can be fortunate in our response if we try to truly connect and listen to our loved ones. One looks up from the bills and the dishes and glares at the sky asking, "Why?" The conclusions that you draw become your belief system and your personality and do inform the way that you progress with living and the way in which you die.
These moments, like our lives, are transient.
I can't stop thinking about these things and their influence upon us. I have long looked to art to force me to touch base with the transcendent. The iconic image reminds us and guides us to a place of feeling and connection and restores Love -- in it's deepest, broadest sense. In reminding us of our temporality hopefully we become better people.
Apparently even 28,000 year old cultures, all cultures, except for perhaps the Taliban unless you consider them to be one helluva a piece of performance art, (see: Thomas Dworzak), all create iconic visual representations. One purpose of these artifacts is to serve as a reminder of the transcendent. These visions vary and, for obvious reasons, are absolutely informed by the unique physical circumstances of the culture's locale and the sets of experiences that have created the culture, in other words, their personality.
In conceptualizing the images of Interstice I travel. I research the culture associated with the area I am staying in -- for example, indigenous Native American cultures of the Grand Canyon. I interview local people. Then I construct imagery that includes references to these cultural touchstones.
Ultimately, however, the images represent my personal quest and vision. I watched my father die in a hospital bed after enduring the sufferings of a long, knowingly terminal, illness. Ten years later, I am still asking, "Where the did he go?" By he, I mean the thing that created the light in his eyes. This could be neurons and synapses, it could be the soul, the spirit. I am photographing where the soul went.
The word "interstice" refers to intervening space. Space can be a period of time, a physical corner, or the invisible, intangible meeting of different states of consciousness or perhaps alternate planes of existence (see: contemporary theories in physics). In Catholic theology, "Interstice" refers to the minimal interval of time that must elapse between beatification and canonization. During that time, God's minions on earth are still trying to figure out if the deceased is worthy of being considered a saint.
This is a very long-winded explanation of my thought process, and most artist's statements for submission to anything get limited to 250 words or something like that. But i don't have a 250 word limit to my brain (or my blog). If you've read this blog more than once, you may realize that I've been working to refine the formal statement for some time. I am just elaborating here in order to distill my project's essence and finally write something good.
Photographs in the Interstice series represent these intervening spaces, difficult to see, visualize, occurring in dream, meditative and end-of-life states. They are a response to a common complaint -- often associated with personality disorders, depression, Marxist theories of alienation or maybe just teenage angst -- that one feels empty or disconnected. Even when you experience those feelings, you still have an inner self, a soul, a personality, to nurture. Hunter-gatherer cultures, classical Tibetans, even Western culture prior to the Renaissance considered this inner-self to be far more important than the exterior presentation we prize today.
Psychological research into the brain's mechanisms for visual and aural perception also attempts to answer more esoteric questions. Sometimes those darn scientists even consider why thousands of people report sightings of deceased loved ones termed "apparitional experiences." These are unverifiable and should be impossible. I draw on such research and my personal interviews when I create these images of interstitial spaces and of the translucent, non-corporeal "spirit" as it travels around this or other planes of existence.
The "spirit" seen in Interstice photographs becomes an icon of the permeability of the past we long for, the present we inhabit, the future of which we dream. The images present a translucent beacon reminding us of existential issues that remain unresolved. They are beautiful and transitory, like existence itself.
I do enjoy reading a good artist's statement. It's great to learn what someone's work is and why they make it. However, I first decided to pursue visual arts seriously when I was 14 and swooned upon a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. I pretend I am more sophisticated now, but the rush, the energy, the excitement of the Monet's, the O'Keefes, the thousand years of art history and whatever else was on display at the time (I do wish I recalled all of it), thrilled me. I felt closer to a feeling of transcendence or divine than I ever had in the church in which I was raised. In fact, I had been a fairly devout child but connecting through artistic vision was far more powerful.
And during this visit, I read not a single statement or anything else about the work. I felt its power and influence merely from taking it in.
Why do I make the photographs in the project Interstice, and my video projects - which are certainly related?
The transience of the world, of this life. It's all gone in an instant.
So, where do you go?
First, you must define "you." People apparently have innate personalities resonant from birth. Babies make that clear. And then we spend our entire lives building that which is our "self." A huge industry capitalizes on this every day. No one has answered the question - does the self have a color?
We probably only bother because even though reality may be a questionable condition (see contemporary philosophy), mortality is experienced by all of us as an irrefutable fact. Without the deep-rooted certainty of an implicit timeline, desperately feared, what would we accomplish? Can personality be considered an accomplishment? It is one of those things that actually matters when you're lying in that hospital bed. Thanks for the deadline, God.
As we mill around on the surface of the earth, the very specifics of relationship, tasks of daily life, family or no family, career demands, these very tangible details often dominate our thoughts. I curse the intense penetration of the mundane, the fact that this morning I had to spend a half an hour moving things we had stored in the basement because the building's sewer pump broke (and can you imagine if i were responsible for taking care of THAT detail). We scramble constantly to avert disasters, manage debacles, or just cope with unexpected nuisances like parking fines (two hours the other day getting an inspection because we forgot it had expired, maybe we should live in Minnesota where that would have been impossible during the state shutdown), and condominium catastrophes. Our minds get stuck focusing on the petty.
However, a true disaster - war, 9/11, car accidents, an event (you know, death) or truly committing to a spiritual quest often precipitate so-called "life changes." The soul becomes awake.
We can be fortunate in our response if we try to truly connect and listen to our loved ones. One looks up from the bills and the dishes and glares at the sky asking, "Why?" The conclusions that you draw become your belief system and your personality and do inform the way that you progress with living and the way in which you die.
These moments, like our lives, are transient.
I can't stop thinking about these things and their influence upon us. I have long looked to art to force me to touch base with the transcendent. The iconic image reminds us and guides us to a place of feeling and connection and restores Love -- in it's deepest, broadest sense. In reminding us of our temporality hopefully we become better people.
Apparently even 28,000 year old cultures, all cultures, except for perhaps the Taliban unless you consider them to be one helluva a piece of performance art, (see: Thomas Dworzak), all create iconic visual representations. One purpose of these artifacts is to serve as a reminder of the transcendent. These visions vary and, for obvious reasons, are absolutely informed by the unique physical circumstances of the culture's locale and the sets of experiences that have created the culture, in other words, their personality.
In conceptualizing the images of Interstice I travel. I research the culture associated with the area I am staying in -- for example, indigenous Native American cultures of the Grand Canyon. I interview local people. Then I construct imagery that includes references to these cultural touchstones.
Ultimately, however, the images represent my personal quest and vision. I watched my father die in a hospital bed after enduring the sufferings of a long, knowingly terminal, illness. Ten years later, I am still asking, "Where the did he go?" By he, I mean the thing that created the light in his eyes. This could be neurons and synapses, it could be the soul, the spirit. I am photographing where the soul went.
The word "interstice" refers to intervening space. Space can be a period of time, a physical corner, or the invisible, intangible meeting of different states of consciousness or perhaps alternate planes of existence (see: contemporary theories in physics). In Catholic theology, "Interstice" refers to the minimal interval of time that must elapse between beatification and canonization. During that time, God's minions on earth are still trying to figure out if the deceased is worthy of being considered a saint.
This is a very long-winded explanation of my thought process, and most artist's statements for submission to anything get limited to 250 words or something like that. But i don't have a 250 word limit to my brain (or my blog). If you've read this blog more than once, you may realize that I've been working to refine the formal statement for some time. I am just elaborating here in order to distill my project's essence and finally write something good.
Photographs in the Interstice series represent these intervening spaces, difficult to see, visualize, occurring in dream, meditative and end-of-life states. They are a response to a common complaint -- often associated with personality disorders, depression, Marxist theories of alienation or maybe just teenage angst -- that one feels empty or disconnected. Even when you experience those feelings, you still have an inner self, a soul, a personality, to nurture. Hunter-gatherer cultures, classical Tibetans, even Western culture prior to the Renaissance considered this inner-self to be far more important than the exterior presentation we prize today.
Psychological research into the brain's mechanisms for visual and aural perception also attempts to answer more esoteric questions. Sometimes those darn scientists even consider why thousands of people report sightings of deceased loved ones termed "apparitional experiences." These are unverifiable and should be impossible. I draw on such research and my personal interviews when I create these images of interstitial spaces and of the translucent, non-corporeal "spirit" as it travels around this or other planes of existence.
The "spirit" seen in Interstice photographs becomes an icon of the permeability of the past we long for, the present we inhabit, the future of which we dream. The images present a translucent beacon reminding us of existential issues that remain unresolved. They are beautiful and transitory, like existence itself.
Friday, July 1, 2011
A new project - His/her face softened
Last week I did my first test of a video portrait project. It examines the subtleties of emotional facial expression. It's a work in progress and brand new, but here is a still from the first test, of Ryan Shorosky.
© 2011 bridget batch
© 2011 bridget batch
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